Clos Roche Blanche Cuvée Pif 2010

If I had to pick one wine that represents what One Pallet is all about, I might well pick this one.

It’s from an under-celebrated region. It’s a blend of two unlikely varieties. Its journey to the bottle was via a gentle path through living soils, expressive vines and sensitive winemaking. It offers tremendous value at a price everyone can enjoy. And it tastes bloody amazing.

Wines like these and the vignerons behind them are a breath of fresh air for anyone wanting to enjoy wine made for all the right reasons.

Didier Barrouillet has his head on his shoulders and his feet firmly planted in the soil. Over the last 30 years he has totally transformed production at Clos Roche Blanche. Ironically, it took a chemical engineer to realise the damage being done by the typical use of chemicals in the vineyard and he set about to eradicate them from virtually the entire chain.

“I wanted to start from the ground up, literally: to focus on where everything begins, which is the soil. My initial intentions were simply to make a more authentic beverage. I don’t mean a better one; a wine that uses conventional chemicals and is well made has its public: a public that likes to consume “flawless” wine. But these wines don’t express the soil and the earth they came from, and they weren’t the wines I wanted to make.”*

The wine is unmistakably Loire Cabernet franc with its bright explosive nose of lifted red fruits, silky smooth texture and soft tannins just begging to be drunk. But some out-of-the-box thinking by Monsieur Barrouillet has seen the inclusion of 30% Malbec (or Côt as it’s called in these parts) delivering weight and body to the palate that is sometimes found lacking in Loire Cab francs.

The overall result is a wine that perfectly expresses its origins but in its own unique voice.

This is the real deal.

*It’s well worth taking a few minutes to read the full interview I plucked this extract from for a refreshingly level-headed take on the reasons for minimal intervention to best capture a wine’s potential.

:::ON:::

O = Organic: farming without the use of inputs that can have adverse effects. ‘Non-systemic’ fungicides and pesticides are used in place of ‘systemic’ chemicals said to enter the ‘blood’ of a plant (akin to antibiotics in the human world).

N = Natural: no additives or aids (eg yeast, yeast food, added acid/enzymes/tannin) bar a touch of sulphur during aging or before bottling, if any at all.